The integrated circuit (IC) design is more challenging when semiconductor technologies are continually progressing to smaller feature sizes, such as 45 nanometers, 28 nanometers, and below. The performance of a chip design is seriously influenced by the control of resistance/capacitance (RC), timing, leakage, and topology of the metal/dielectric inter-layers. Those are further related to resolution of the lithography patterning and the imaging accuracy.
To enhance the imaging effect when a design pattern is transferred to a wafer, an optical proximity correction (OPC) to minimize the proximity effect is indispensable. Assist features are added to an IC pattern to improve the imaging resolution of the IC pattern during a lithography patterning process.
In other side, during the semiconductor fabrication, a chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) process is applied to the wafer for polishing back and globally planarizing wafer surface. CMP involves both mechanical grinding and chemical etching in the material removal process. However, because the removal rates of different materials (such as metal and dielectric material) are usually different, polishing selectivity leads to undesirable dishing and erosion effects. Dishing occurs when the copper recedes below or protrudes above the level of the adjacent dielectric. Erosion is a localized thinning of the dielectric. In this case, dummy features are inserted into the IC pattern to enhance the CMP performance.
However, along with the progress of semiconductor technology, the feature sizes are getting smaller and smaller. The existing methods to add various dummy features have limited degree of freedom and effectiveness to tune the pattern density and poor uniformity of the pattern density. Especially, this presents more issues, such as space charge effect and micro-loading effect, when an electron-beam lithography technology is used to form the IC pattern.
Therefore, what is needed is a method for IC design and mask making to effectively and efficiently adjusting an IC pattern to address the above issues.